If you grade it, it's not formative assessment
Having a bit of a crisis of confidence. Canadian teacher and education reformer, Joe Bower tweeted the title of the post this morning. That's not right I thought, I can provide formative feedback on a piece of work which helps students make progress whilst also giving them a grade as a useful signpost to measure their progress against. I took it upon myself to tell Joe as much. He sent me a link to Education's Rotten Apples which summarises Ruth Butler's research which shows that the damage of giving grades trumps feedback. It says, "What happens when states offer performance-based assessments, [...]